FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

JERUSALEM -- When fugitive financier Marc Rich sought a pardon from President Bill Clinton, he turned to powerful friends in Israel for help, including Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the ex-chief of the Mossad spy agency.

The billionaire's representative in Israel, former Mossad operative Avner Azulay, said he helped collect the testimonials from prominent Israelis that played a role in obtaining the 11th-hour pardon, now subject to U.S. Congressional hearings and a federal probe.

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Azulay said he believed Clinton pardoned Rich, in part, because of his role in helping Israel get Jews out of Ethiopia and Yemen.

However, in e-mail exchanges with Rich's lawyers in the United States, Azulay also proposed pressing Hillary Clinton -- who received campaign contributions from Rich's ex-wife, Denise -- into lobbying the president to grant the pardon.

Clinton granted Rich a pardon as one of his last acts as president.

The Belgian-born Rich grew up in the United States but renounced his U.S. citizenship. He holds Israeli and Spanish citizenship and has lived in Switzerland since 1983, when he was indicted in the United States for evading more than $48 million in taxes, for fraud and for illegal oil deals with Iran.

Over the past 20 years, he has contributed $70 million to $80 million to Israeli hospitals, museums, symphonies and to the absorption of immigrants, said Azulay, head of the multimillion-dollar Rich Foundation in Tel Aviv.

A collection of positive statements from prominent Israelis and others about Rich was initially collected for a book celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Rich Foundation, Azulay said.

Azulay denied the real intention was to use them to support a pardon. Only after Rich's legal team decided "spontaneously'' last year to seek a pardon, he said, were some of the statements also used as testimonials.

Azulay would not say how many statements were collected, but said Barak and former Prime Minister Shimon Peres have spoken to Clinton about Rich.

Barak spokesman Gadi Baltiansky confirmed that the prime minister raised the subject in a recent conversation with Clinton, but refused to elaborate. Peres declined comment.

The e-mails, subpoenaed by the U.S. Congress and now part of the public record, reveal intensive behind-the-scenes efforts to engineer a pardon.

Barak's name is mentioned repeatedly. In one e-mail, Azulay suggests asking the White House to delay making a decision until leading Israelis such as Barak and Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami "can make their appeals.''

An e-mail from Robert F. Fink, one of Rich's lawyers, emphasizes the importance of high-level Israeli support. "So do not let up,'' Fink wrote.

Azulay asked the Rich team to keep the prime minister's name out of the press. "It's important to keep all politicians' names out of the story ... this is election time here and has a potential of a blowup,'' Azulay wrote.

Former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit said he recommended to Clinton that Rich be pardoned because the billionaire's business ties helped Israel get Jews out of Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen -- countries without diplomatic ties to the Jewish state at the time.

In a Nov. 28 letter to Clinton, Shavit, who headed the Mossad from 1989 to 1996, wrote that he asked Rich for assistance in the search for missing soldiers and "help in the rescue and evacuation of Jews from enemy countries.''

"Mr. Rich always agreed and used his extensive network of contacts in these countries to produce results, sometimes beyond the expected.

"Israel and the Jewish people are grateful for these unselfish actions, which sometimes had the potential of jeopardizing his own personal interests and business relations,'' the letter said.

Rich, 66, has never lived in Israel, but has given to a series of charities, from funding a program for young Diaspora Jews studying at a Jewish seminary in the West Bank, to a health program for Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip.

In northern Israel, he built a home for autistic children. He gave millions of dollars to Israeli medical centers to research treatments for leukemia, the disease that took his daughter Gabrielle's life in 1996, at age 27.

"He (Rich) has helped Israel address its social problems and provide for its security needs,'' Israeli Parliament Speaker Avraham Burg said in a letter to Clinton, included in the e-mail traffic.

Rich last visited Jerusalem in early January -- before the pardon -- and met with Barak and other leading Israeli politicians, according to the e-mails. He also mingled with young Diaspora Jews visiting Israel as part of the Birthright Israel program to which he contributed $5 million. The program sends Jews to Israel, all expenses paid, to foster ties with the state.

Rich is celebrated in Israel as one of the country's biggest donors to the arts.

When the Haaretz newspaper questioned the propriety of accepting Rich's money for a new wing of the Tel Aviv Museum, the museum's director, Mordechai Omer, responded in a letter: "Whatever the accusations against Marc Rich, he's never been convicted. We are indebted to Marc Rich and his representatives in Israel.''

As for the pardon bid, Azulay said investigators won't find any wrongdoing.

"It was not pre-planned,'' he said. "It came up in conversation. We thought, why not try this?''